


bring all your things and we will build a pyre

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, ya boy rlly needs a hug????? pls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-31 22:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10909224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: Kano has a theory about secrets, and it goes like this: they’re easy to keep if you know where to keep them. He keeps his tucked away in the folds of Ayano’s scarf, just as she keeps it tucked away in dad’s notebook in her dresser drawer. They keep this big, important secret in places just out of sight, just noticeable by the two of them.(an evolution in ten parts.)





	bring all your things and we will build a pyre

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: did someone say sad kano projection fic?? no?? well i wrote some anyways bc i love this boy,,,,,,so much,,,,,,,god. he loved ayano sm like just fukc me up!!
> 
> (i,,,,wrote this instead of working on my lit paper kill me)

 

i.

Kano Shuuya has a theory about the world, and it goes like this: when things are no longer useful, they’re thrown away; the same goes for people.

He knows this because his mom threw a TV remote that stopped working in the trash once, and she always talks about replacing the couch with the broken leg or sends him out to by new kitchen appliances.

He also knows that his mom is probably the prettiest and nicest person in the world, because he’s pretty useless—clumsy and graceless and not all that bright—and she hasn’t thrown him away yet. Still keeps him around.

(It goes like this: sometimes his mom hits him and sometimes he hides in the bathroom after and he knows he shouldn’t but he does it anyways.

And a little bit later his mom will knock on the door all soft and her voice will shake— _Shuuya sweetie, I know you’re in there, please open up honey, I’m sorry_ —and of course he’ll open the door because she’s crying and she’ll hold him close and run her hands though his hair— _it’s just been so hard for me since your father left, I shouldn’t take it out on you, I’m sorry, baby._

And he’ll say _it’s okay_ because it’s okay, he’s the one who did something wrong—broke something or burned something or said something—and she’ll give him that watery smile and say _dinner will be ready in a little bit_ , and _I love you, Shuuya._

And he’ll say _I love you too_ , and his heart will soar because that’s all he ever wants to hear—he’s useless, but she still loves him.

He’ll probably mess something else up later and the whole thing will happen all over again, but for now it’s okay.)

He has a theory about adults, too, and it goes like this: they like to say things, but they rarely ever do things.

The old ladies on the first floor like to talk about how loud his apartment is, like to whisper bad things about things they don’t understand. Shopkeepers his mom buys alcohol from and he buys check-out line bandages from like to give him long looks and ask where he got hurt.

Sometimes people say _you need help, and we can help you_ , but they never actually do anything. Which is fine, there’s nothing he needs help with anyways—they don’t know what they’re talking about! His mom works really hard for everything they have, of course she’s gonna be upset if he keeps ruining that!

The point is: they like to say things that make them sound good and grown up, but in the end, that’s all they ever do. They lie a lot.

Of course, so does Shuuya. But that’s different—he doesn’t want them to keep saying bad things about his mom, so if he tells them that he fell out of the tree in the park or slipped down the stairs, it's not a bad thing. People won’t talk if there’s nothing to talk about.

(It goes like this: his mom deserves the world but the world isn’t very nice and his mom doesn’t deserve _this—_ a knife in her stomach right after she tells him to _run_ but he doesn’t because he can’t because he’s never been very fast—and she’s sad because she worked hard for the jewelry they’re stealing and now she’s dying because he’s never ever been fast enough.

It goes like this: he’s never thought of a world without her before and he doesn’t have to, because then the knife is in him, still warm, sinking deep into his chest, and his mom is saying something to him but he can’t hear it. He’ll never hear it.)

 

ii.

Shuuya is Kano now, because his mom was the only one who called him Shuuya and his mom is dead now, and his very very distant aunt doesn’t want to call him anything.

He thinks that Shuuya died, and this new person that looks like him but doesn’t feel like him came back to life in his place—and he doesn’t even look like him all the time. He came back to life different. He thinks something reached into his heart and swallowed it whole.

Kido is like him, and so is Seto. 

They live in the Monster Room, all three of them together, little monsters with different eyes from different worlds.

Kano has a theory about monsters, and it goes like this: people like people who are the same as them; when something is different, not understood, it is called a monster, because it is not the same as the people who like similarity. 

Seto and Kido and him are different, and so they are monsters. (Kano wonders if that means he’s always been some sort of monster.)

Kido and Seto have a lot of trouble controlling their Mysterious Monster Powers—when Kido is upset, she fades away into nothing, and sometimes it takes him and Seto hours and hours to find her again; Seto’s power turns on and off like it has a mind of its own.

Kano mastered all his tricks in a matter of months.

He’s a natural born liar, something whispers at him. He doesn’t argue with it, because it’s true.

(It goes like this: he doesn’t like lying to his friends, especially since they’re like him, but he doesn’t want them to see him cry when they’re already crying.

It’s hard it lie to Seto sometimes, though. His power kind of blocks his out, cancels it out, and he thinks that maybe Seto has noticed how his voice sounds when he’s forcing a smile. He tries not to think about it. Seto hates using his power either way, so when he finally does get ahold of it, Kano won’t have to worry about being found out anymore.)

 

iii.

Kano is Shuuya again, because Ayano calls him Shuuya, so that’s what he goes by.

He thinks he probably loves Ayano more than he’s ever loved anyone, and he thinks Ayano loves him more than anyone’s ever loved him. 

They aren’t monsters because red is the color of a hero, and if red is what they are then they must be heroes instead.

Ayano is definitely a hero, Shuuya thinks. She’s everything to him.

(It goes like this: He tries to practice once, to see if he’s really gotten his superpower down for real—shuts himself in the bathroom and locks the door so he won't be interrupted. He looks at his reflection in the mirror and focuses, breathing deeply. 

He tries to be Kido first—laughs at himself when he gets her scowl down perfect. It’s actually kind of scary—he wonders if she ever gets scared looking in the mirror, too, and laughs again. A moment later it’s Seto, a bright smile and messy hair, and then it’s Ayano. For a moment, he hesitates—the smile he tries to put on her lips doesn’t seem real. He can’t quite replicate the original. 

He doesn’t ever wanna see her smile like that, so he closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he’s one of the kids he used to run with at the park while his old mom was at work. Then it’s the supermarket man who used to hand out free samples every few days. 

He’s drawn into his old routine, faces flickering in the order he used to see them: woman on her daily jog, check-out line guy who used to ask him questions, old ladies on the first floor. When he looks up again, his mom is looking back at him. 

Her face is almost hazy around the edges (has he already started to forget her? just because he has a new mom? what kind of son does that make him? what kind of person?), hair framing tired tired eyes, so he tries to smile at her to make her feel better—the reflection smiles back, but it doesn’t look real. 

Nothing he ever does looks real.

There’s a robber staring back at him next, blurry and caught in the moments right before his death—he stumbles back, eyes snapping shut. When he opens them again, the man is still there. His chest stings in phantom pain and his throat clenches in anxiety—he thought he could control this, why can’t he control this, why won’t the man leave? 

He shouts at the man to leave, and the man listens, and his aunt takes shape instead—monster child, she called him, and that’s what he feels like as he slides to the floor because he can’t stop it, he _can’t stop it_ —he’s a social worker and a bully and a robber and a monster he’d seen on TV, his mom and a boy and a girl and it won’t stop it won’t stop it won’t stop—

He jerks his head back hard against the wall, sharp pain shooting down his spine—he can see his clothes and body changing, flickering, through his fingers where they’re covering his eyes. 

He thinks that maybe he’s crying, maybe he’s yelling, but it’s too far away—he pulls at his hair, pain prickling his scalp.

“Shuuya?”

And oh no that’s. That’s Ayano—God, please not Ayano, not her, not now, what would she think of him? What was he? Was he himself yet?

“Shuuya,” again, a little louder, and she’s kneeling down, drawing her hand back when he flinches away—he doesn’t look at her.

“Go away,” his voice is alien and wavering, “Please go away,”

“Shuuya, I—“

“Please—I’m a monster,” he says, doesn’t miss the way she flinches back, wonders if she’s scared of him, “I can’t stop it, I c-can’t control it, I can’t—“ 

He tenses at warm hands curling around his wrists. “Shuuya,” she says, soft and patient, “Look at me?” a gentle squeeze when he ignores her, “Please, look at me.” 

He draws his head up and Ayano is looking down at him like he is everything soft and good in the world; it makes him want to either cry or crawl into a hole to die. 

“Looks fine to me,” she says after a moment of searching his face, “I don’t see a monster at all. I see a brave hero,” she smiles, a warm hand cupping his cheek, her other drawing softly through the hair he pulled, “You’re not a monster, Shuuya. So please, don’t ever call yourself that again.”

He cries on her. Gets her scarf all wet and gross. But she holds him tight like he’s worth something, so that’s okay. Even if he’s really _really_ embarrassed about it later.)

 

iv.

Shuuya is Ayano now, except not really, he’s just pretending to be Ayano, using his power so she can work on other more important things than school. 

It’s a secret, just between them.

(It goes like this: one day, he hears Ayano crying alone in her room. It’s about grades or something, is what she says when he frantically opens the door and rushes to throw his arms around her.

She wipes her eyes quickly, smiles despite being caught, hugs him and pets his hair like he’s the one who needs to be comforted, like he's the one who was crying. He never wanted to see her cry, but the hesitation before her words and the way her head tilts when she smiles—he knows them. He’s practiced them. He does the same.

Are they the same? he thinks, amazed, but quickly throws that idea away because Ayano is Ayano and he is Kano and he is a monster, so there’s no way. 

But still, the idea lingers. Her smiles are fake sometimes, too.

If she does what he does, maybe that means he’s not so bad after all.)

It’s a secret, and he’s great at keeping secrets. It’s harder to keep something from your whole family and pretend to be a whole other person at the same time, but Ayano asked him to, and so he’ll do it. 

He has a theory about secrets, and it goes like this: they’re easy to keep if you know where to keep them. 

He keeps his tucked away in the folds of Ayano’s scarf, just as she keeps it tucked away in dad’s notebook in her dresser drawer. They keep this big, important secret in places just out of sight, just noticeable by the two of them. 

It’s almost exciting at first. It’s like an adventure they share, a mission like the ones they used to make up when they were little. 

But they aren’t little anymore, and the secret they find within their secret is scary. It’s real, and it’s dangerous. He doesn’t know if they can handle it on their own anymore, but there’s no way he’s gonna drag Seto or Kido into it, and he knows Ayano isn’t either, so it’s just them. 

(It goes like this: he watches Ayano fall.

He knew his sister was planning something, but never thought she could be planning _this_ —she said she’d be with them forever. Why did she lie? 

He stays back instead of running to get her at first, because he’s afraid that if he takes another step forward, the momentum will push her over the edge.

She goes over the edge anyways. 

He finally runs then, but he has never ever been fast enough.)

(It goes like this: he’s barely aware of walking down the stairs, of lying on the ground and looking up at the building she fell from, of closing his eyes and pretending. He conjures up an image of what he imagines she would look like, broken and still and bent out of shape. He has experience with it, after all, crouching over his mother right before they got him, too.

The people noticing, the people yelling in horror and calling the police, see a dead girl sprawled out on the sidewalk.

Under the mask, Kano curls up on his side, and cries.)

 

v.

Kisaragi goddamn Shintaro is rude and mean and condescending and never ever appreciated Ayano when she was alive, always treated her horribly—Kano was there, he _knows!_ —and Kano is upset and heartbroken and still wearing her face, so he turns and _it’s your fault,_ he snarls, uncaring, angry because he knows it’s not true but he’s aways been great at lying to himself, _it’s your fault for not noticing anything._

 

vi.

Shuuya is Kano again, because Ayano is dead now and they’re on their own in the big adult world—going by their last names makes it sound like they’re in some kinda secret organization, but it also makes them sound older. Seto’s working two jobs now, so sounding older is especially important for him, no matter how bad of a taste it leaves in Kano’s mouth.

For him, it isn’t any different. He’s always felt older than he is. It’s the other two that are having the hardest time, probably, but Kano doesn’t know how to help them with that, so he lets Kido be the leader and lets Seto work as many jobs as he wants to and gives them time to adjust to their brand new lives.

It wasn’t hard for Kano to leave the house. His mom was gone, and so was his sister, and his dad might as well be dead with that thing living inside him (and he had to keep his siblings far away from it), so there was really nothing left for him there.

He smiles more because Seto has been crying at night and trying not to, and tries to fill the apartment with stupid smalltalk because Kido has been so quiet that he thinks she might really be the ghost she was always so afraid of becoming. 

It’s better when Seto brings home the girl he found in the woods. No one wants to make her feel unwelcome, so it’s almost like they’re forced to find a new swing of things without Ayano around. 

They grow. They change. Kido becomes stronger for everyone, Seto works hard to keep a roof over their heads. Kano doesn’t really know what he does, besides annoy them both, but they keep him around anyways. Old habits die hard, he supposes. 

He visits Ayano’s grave regularly, while the others go less and less, eventually only trekking out to the cemetery on important days like holidays or birthdays. Kano tries not to be annoyed about that, tries not to be angry—they’re moving forward, moving on. They’re not _forgetting_ about her; it’s healthy to move beyond tragedy and all that.

As hard as he tries (he doesn’t try hard), though, he can’t ever seem to make that step. 

Both of them are changing, becoming better people, while he remains stagnant. He doesn’t know if he wants to change, is the thing. He doesn’t think he likes what he is now, but he doesn’t know what he would become if he did change. He doesn’t know if it would be anything better than this. 

 

vii.

He goes out at night because he can’t sleep, goes out during the day because he can’t sit still. It feels like he’s walking on the edge of a precipice, like one wrong step will send him flying just like his sister—his smiles are brittle and he thinks he’s probably hard to be around at the best of times, but he exists that way, because that’s how he is now.

He doesn’t really have any theories about anything anymore. He has facts—Ayano’s death was more than a suicide but no one can know that; their dad has a snake inside him but no one can know that; once you start lying you can’t stop; once you start faking you have to keep faking until you don’t know what part of you is fake—but he doesn’t have any solid theories. He leaves the planning up to his scary commander and tags along for the ride. 

(It goes like this: it’s nighttime and the moon is out and there’s this thrum of anxious energy in his chest, something clawing at him with the urgency to _do_ something, but there’s nothing for him to do, so he’s finding things to do. 

He almost gets mugged but pretends to be a police officer, finger guns masked as the real thing, and he giggles when the mugger runs off. He finds half empty bottles of spray paint and paints over messy graffiti on alleyway streets and brick walls, humming to himself as he moves.

The city has a lot to say if you listen to it. More than enough to drown out everything else.

He climbs the fire escape to the top of a tall building he picks because the glass of the windows reflected the moon all pretty and catch his attention, metal stairs clunking under his feet as he walks. It’s taller than their current apartment, he finds when he climbs to the top and peers over the edge, but not quite as tall as Ayano’s old school. 

It’s slightly windy out, so he hikes himself up onto ledge, and stands up straight. He smiles. A lesson in balance.

He really is on a precipice now, he thinks wildly, takes one step, two—his boots have solid footing so they’re great for this kind of thing. His heart thuds in his ears and he walks, carefully, but not too carefully. Wouldn’t want ruin the suspense. 

He’s nearing the corner of the roof, so he decides to turn around. Throws a leg out and spins around, just barely barely keeping his footing. His breath catches, adrenaline rushing through his body. 

He takes a step, two, three, swings his leg once, twice, twists around, his back to the world and the empty street below. Closes his eyes, spreads his arms like some false angel. Takes a deep breath.

For a moment, he thinks he might really do it. Feels his leg waver. Tremble. 

In the end, no matter how many moment he stands like that, on edge, he just can’t seem to fall. He shifts his weight forwards, lands with a huff on the solid roof. 

He’s not sure whether or not he’s disappointed. 

“Not today, I guess,” he says to no one, and turns to the fire escape.)

 

viii.

Years fly by like that.

More people come, the Dan expands, adds members left and right. 

Shintaro finds his way in, somehow. 

He’s different, now. Thinner. Taller. Older. He always looked like he never got enough sleep, but now it seems like he hardly sleeps at all. Kano know what that feels like, so he hates the boy for it. 

He hates him. He really does. He tells himself this enough that he almost almost _almost_ believes it. (The truth is the one he hates the most is himself, but he’s always been good at lying.) 

He’s different, now, Seto tells him when Kano mumbles complaints to him one night, tells him that _he didn’t treat Ayano very good when she was alive, okay_. Kido seems to like him fine, too. He tries to help with the cooking sometimes, even though the key word is _tries._ He’s painfully polite sometimes, and hardly ever snaps at anyone, either. 

So maybe he is different now. Maybe people change, people other than Seto and Kido, maybe people who aren’t good people can become something like good people. 

If someone like _Shintaro_ can become better, then what does that make Kano? He’s still the same. 

He’s still the same. 

(It goes like this: Takane gets her body back because he finally found a way to give it to her, and then he snaps at Seto because he isn’t a kind person so he doesn’t understand why Seto looks so surprised about it, looks so young and hurt.

“What’s gotten into you, lately?” he asks.

“What are you talking about? I’ve always been like this,” Kano says, because it’s the truth—his mouth feels dry because he didn’t _mean_ to tell the truth, but he said it anyways. It’s always been like this around Seto. 

It turns into crying, because the thing about secrets is that it’s always harder to keep them by yourself, and Ayano died and left Kano to keep theirs alone, by himself, and Seto hates using his power but he’s using it anyways because Kano _can’t say it_ but he desperately wants someone else to finally _know_. 

He’s always known that Seto was changing, becoming better, but it’s when he runs a big hand through his hair and goes “You’ve always tried to carry things all on your own,” and “Let’s share this burden together, alright?” that Kano notices how _tall_ he’s gotten. 

He’s older. He’s sturdy. He’s _good._

He’s seen inside Kano’s head now, probably seen all kinds of nasty stuff, but he’s still here. 

He’s still here.

“Nobody’s gonna blame you,” he says, because he’s seen inside his head now and he Knows. It’s equal parts relieving and terrifying. He’s spent so long making himself unknowable, and now he’s known.)

 

ix.

Kano has this theory about the world. It goes like this: the world is big, and hard, and scary, and people make mistakes and sometimes they make big mistakes, sometimes they lie and sometimes they lie because they have to. People die and people move on and some people stay stuck in the past. People are bad sometimes but people can change. People can grow. 

Kano doesn’t know if it’s possible for him to change or to grow, because Kano is still a monster, and monsters aren’t people, but he thinks he might be able to try.

 

x.

The last thing he sees before the world goes black again is Kido on the ground and the last thing he hears is Seto yelling somewhere out of sight and the last thing he feels is the cool press of metal against his forehead. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> comment to save my lit paper rip me
> 
> (also did u catch my lowkey setokano bc tht is my shit dude,,)


End file.
